By Eleanor Warnock and Sarah Berlow

JRT scoured the public record for an answer. The best we could come up with: benign neglect.

It’s no surprise that China dominates the presumptive 2012 Republican presidential nominee’s views of Asia, as it does President Barack Obama’s. The chief position paper on Mr. Romney’s website on the region is titled “China & East Asia.” But it might hurt Japanophiles a bit — not to mention the Foreign Ministry officials constantly worried about Tokyo’s fading importance to Washington — to find just three mentions of Japan in the 1410-word position paper. The first notes that, in 2010, China “surpassed Japan to become the world’s second largest economy…” In the other two, Japan is cited as one of America’s Asian allies — each time listed after South Korea.

Mr. Romney does make frequent reference to America’s longtime Asian ally in his 2010 book, “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.” Most of it is unflattering, as the former Massachusetts governor uses Japan — along with other countries — to show the advantages of the American system.

–On cars: After writing that Japan gave U.S. automakers a run for their money when they “invaded” the U.S. market in the 1970s, he adds: “In my mind, there is nothing that has come out of Japan that can compare with the look and throaty growl of my 2005 red Mustang convertible.”

–On innovation: “As important as education is to innovation, we are fortunate that other factors, such as culture, also play a vital role…One example: Americans aren’t afraid to fail. There’s no loss of face if it occurs, as there is in Japan and Germany.”

–On health care: “In Japan, for example, physicians can own pharmacies, and those who do make a small profit each time they prescribe drugs. American doctors are not allowed to own pharmacies, which, it turns out, is a good thing. Japanese doctors prescribe twice as many drugs per person as do American doctors…”

He also warns that Tokyo could turn from Washington to Beijing: “If Japan believes the United States is weakening its commitment on the Asian continent, it will distance itself from America and be forced to seek an alliance with China.”

It’s unclear whether Mr. Romney crossed paths with Japan during his business career. The Tokyo office of Bain and Co., the consulting company where Mr. Romney started, doesn’t have any record of him visiting from the time the office opened in 1981 until he quit in 1985, or when he was interim CEO from 1990 to 1992. Bain Capital, the asset management company that Mr. Romney co-founded in 1984, did not open an office in Tokyo until 2006, seven years after Mr. Romney left.

Mr. Romney did visit Japan at least once, at the tail end of his term as Massachusetts governor, in December 2006. While he hadn’t yet formally declared his candidacy, he was widely expected at the time to be preparing to run for president in 2008. His visit to Tokyo — combined with travel to China and South Korea — was portrayed in the press as an attempt to burnish his foreign policy credentials.

The Tokyo trip got little press either in the U.S. or Japan. The Asahi Shimbun ran a short item on page 7 of its Dec. 6 editions, describing a speech he had given in Tokyo the day before. “I am not a professional politician, I am an ordinary citizen just like you,” he was quoted as saying. The daily newspaper quotes him expressing concern about the stability of Iraq after an expected U.S. troop drawdown. If Mr. Romney said anything specific about Japan, the Asahi didn’t record it.

Comments (5 of 6)

Japan and America have never understand each culture for 60years.For Japan America and China is nealy closer(Destroyer Mammonist self-righteousness).I wish Japan conclude an alliance with Europian nations.Therefore Japan have to have force.

2:22 pm May 7, 2012

Anonymous wrote:

Romney is a dip.

3:17 am May 5, 2012

Mustang? wrote:

“In my mind, there is nothing that has come out of Japan that can compare with the look and throaty growl of my 2005 red Mustang convertible.”

I will vote for Romney, but he's seriously wrong here! Give me a GT-R over a mustang any day...

1:54 am May 5, 2012

Jeffrey wrote:

Expanding on "Romney," he's just generally clueless. Like Bush before him, he doesn't have a vision for America other than making sure taxes don't go up and letting large corporations do pretty much whatever they want to, which has been the Republican answer to governing since Reagan.

The Republican party has become so narrow and moved so far to the right that Eisenhower and Nixon would have been too liberal for them.

11:57 pm May 3, 2012

Last Iconoclast wrote:

He grew up in Michigan as the son of an American auto maker that would eventually get absorbed into Chrysler after putting out abysmal failures like the Rambler, Gremlin, and Pacer. No reason to wonder why he's no friend of Japan.

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Japan Real Time is a newsy, concise guide to what works, what doesn’t and why in the one-time poster child for Asian development, as it struggles to keep pace with faster-growing neighbors while competing with Europe for Michelin-rated restaurants. Drawing on the expertise of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, the site provides an inside track on business, politics and lifestyle in Japan as it comes to terms with being overtaken by China as the world’s second-biggest economy. You can contact the editors at japanrealtime@wsj.com